We Are All in the Gutter, but Some of Us Are Looking at a Clown
by GIRL IN STORY
Summary: Richie had performance anxiety. Not that kind, he told the Eddie in his head. Get your mind out of the gutter.


Richie had performance anxiety.

Eddie's initial response to this was, "But you perform _all the time_." He was just talking about the Voices, and the bits, and the monologue, but Richie had laughed like he had gotten off a good one.

This was before Richie's first performance as Algernon in _The Importance of Being Earnest_. It was a groundbreaking interpretation of the _fin de siècle_ play as realized by the Derry High School branch of the International Thespian Society. Eddie took Freshman Theater Tech in support, but quit when he was assigned to _Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark_.

The same pep talk that had worked on Freshman Richie washed over Come Back Tour Richie.

"You'll be fine," he said. "You're _Richie Tozier_."

"You say that like it's a good thing."

"Just— I don't know. Imagine the audience in their underwear?"

Eddie felt out of his depth in the way Richie always managed to make him feel despite the fact that he literally had a Netflix Special called Not That Deep. He once told Eddie that, "If you've ever been to a wedding with an open bar, you've heard the sound of one hand clapping."

Richie frowned. "According to you, my audience is made up entirely of twelve-year-old boys."

"Then don't do that," said Eddie. "That's illegal. Is it illegal just to imagine it? Doesn't matter. Don't do that."

"Is it illegal if you're twelve too?" asked Richie, in a voice so soft Eddie was sure he wasn't meant to hear it. Richie knew how to _project_.

"Who were you imagining in their underwear at twelve?" he asked.

"Hey, I didn't have to imagine much with those shorts you used to wear."

Eddie blushed. He was used to Richie's jokes, except that he would never get used to the ones he wished weren't jokes.

"Don't slut shame twelve-year old me."

"I'm not shaming you for your shorts," said Richie. "I loved them."

He waggled his eyebrows a second too late.

"Time's up," said Bobby, poking his head through the green room door.

Eddie slapped him on the back and left the dressing room before Richie could see how much he was blushing.

* * *

Richie had performance anxiety. Not that kind, he told the Eddie in his head. Get your mind out of the gutter.

_We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars._

Oscar Wilde.

"You'll be fine," said Eddie. "You're _Richie Tozier_."

"You say that like it's a good thing."

Richie couldn't focus on the conversation, because his breathing had gone from automatic to manual, and he'd never been much of a multitasker for someone with ADHD.

_In through your nose, out through your Cuban cigar._

His first shrink had taught him that one. His second shrink was a bobblehead, and the third one had studied psychology when Freud was just old enough to be considered antique, and therefore, more than he was worth to begin with.

"Just— I don't know. Imagine the audience in their underwear?" said Eddie.

"According to you, my audience is entirely made of up twelve-year-old boys."

"Don't do that," he said. "That's a felony. Is it a felony just to think it? Doesn't matter."

"Is it a felony if you're twelve too?" asked Richie.

"That was a mistake," said the Eddie in his head. The Eddie in front of him frowned.

"Who were you imagining in their underwear at twelve?"

"Hey, I didn't have to imagine much with those shorts you used to wear."

"You might want to laugh now," said the Eddie in his head, and Richie remembered to waggle his eyebrows.

At least it wasn't pink elephants. Richie could maybe deal with being crazy if it meant looking at Eddie all day. Even if he did look… like that.

Probably how John Nash felt about Paul Bettany.

Definitely how the Narrator about Brad Pitt.

Richie was not special. He was not a beautiful or unique snowflake. He was the same decaying organic matter as everything else.

This wasn't real crazy. This was what Richie thought crazy should look like because he watched too many movies. Real crazy was what he had to look forward to. Shitting myself and screaming.

"Don't scream," said the Eddie in his head. "Use your words."

"Don't slut shame twelve-year old me," said the Eddie in real life.

"I'm not shaming you for your shorts. I loved them."

"How did you keep this secret for thirty years?" asked the Eddie in his head. "Oh, yeah. You forgot it. Wonder how long you can keep it now. Want to make it interesting?"

"Time's up," said Bobby, leaving the green room door open behind him.

Richie was opening at the newly re-established Plato's Retreat in NYC. He had been a little concerned about what he would find in the green room, considering Plato's Retreat used to be a gay swing club, but it looked normal enough. There were a few chairs were grouped around a glass coffee cable. It would've looked like a perfectly normal living room if it weren't for the scented candles and oil.

Well, everyone had their pre-show rituals. Meditation wasn't the strangest one he'd ever heard of. That honor went to the black metal band Mayhem, who did actual rituals, sometimes involving live goats.

At least, they were live when the rituals started.

Eddie slapped Richie on the back in the single most heterosexual gesture known to bros before disappearing.

"Chin up," said the Eddie in his head. "They'll love you."

Richie raised his chin uncertainly.

"Not that far up. They'll go for the jugular."

* * *

He was still getting used to the Eddie in his head, like a new roommate. Head Eddie was there when they were kids, but he had been a benignly annoying presence, like Jiminy Cricket. With adolescence came the first cognitive dissonance. Head Eddie said things that Richie wasn't sure Real Eddie would say. Then again, Real Eddie didn't know what went on in Richie's head.

For the past thirty years, Richie had believed Head Eddie to be his conscience. He just thought his conscience was sort of a neat freak and, like, super homophobic.

These days, Head Eddie's ability to remain standing bothered Richie even more than homophobia _or_ the R-rated gore.

"Your center of gravity is ridiculous," he told Head Eddie the next day, in his empty apartment. The Losers had all moved to New York, where they were actually rich enough to live in the same building, unlike the original cast of _Friends_.

They'd been barging in on him more and more since he went back to work. They kept trying to convince Richie it was because they missed him. He knew better, so he'd begun avoiding them. He hated surprise parties where the surprise was it wasn't a party.

"Your forehead is ridiculous," said Head Eddie, so obviously they knew each other's weaknesses.

Richie sighed. "How is this going to end?"

"Sick of me already?" Head Eddie didn't look up. He was, for some reason, mixing a martini. Richie didn't even have a cocktail shaker. He drank his liquor like a man— out of an empty Gatorade bottle so he wouldn't get fired. Also, he usually ended up needing the electrolytes.

"No."

"Liar," Head Eddie accused.

"Actor."

"There's no difference, Tozier," he said.

"I love _The Sixth Sense_ as much as the next guy who can pretend M. Night Shyamalan never made the _Unbreakable _trilogy," said Richie. "I mean, if you're going to make a supervillain origin story, maybe don't make it about disabled people. We have a hard enough time getting out of bed, let alone taking over the world— _but _you didn't die."

Head Eddie took a swig from his martini glass, skewered olive bobbing against his cheek. Richie watched the liquid trickle down his sucking chest wound. Maybe it wasn't _The Sixth Sense_. Maybe it was _Pirates of the Caribbean. _

"You didn't die in real life," Richie amended, before repeating his question. "So how is this going to end?"

"This isn't a movie," said Head Eddie."If it was a movie, it wouldn't be _The Sixth Sense_. It would be _Fight Club_. I'm an anthropomorphic manifestation of your psychological issues. I know you know that," he said, "because I know everything you know."

"Then what am I thinking right now?" Richie asked, crossing his arms.

"You're imagining me naked again."

He uncrossed his arms. "Good guess."

* * *

Every time Richie entered a room, the people in it stopped talking. He was getting his cues mixed up. He wasn't going to win an Academy Award for Best Liar.

Actor.

"If you dust in a circular motion, you won't leave streaks," said Head Eddie, looking at his reflection in the polished surface of the coffee table. It was glass, just like the one in the green room at Plato's Retreat, but less smudged. Although apparently still too smudged for Headdie.

"You can clean my apartment if you want to," said Richie. He stepped over the DVD cases that littered the floor. He hadn't been expecting company. His parents had taught him that it's polite to call before you visit someone.

"If you weren't expecting company, then why aren't you surprised to see me?" asked Head Eddie, straightening the magazines on the coffee table. He stacked _Star _on top of _People_. "Cleanliness is next to godliness."

That was something Sonia used to say.

"I don't know." Richie stroked his chin. "Hiking through deserts. Martyrdom. Crucifixion. Godliness sounds like dirty work."

"Maybe all that stuff isn't godliness," said Head Eddie. He paused and stroked his own chin. "Why did you give me a beard?"

Richie shrugged. "I don't like men with facial hair. Another reason I just can't buy into Christianity."

Head Eddie kept cleaning.

"You know how God told Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge? It's like how Brad Pitt told them not to talk about Fight Club. He wanted them to. So he could start Project Mayhem." Richie tapped the side of his head. "Reverse psychology."

"I told you, this isn't a movie."

"I know that. If it were, you would be better looking."

"I give up," said Head Eddie. "I can't work under these conditions."

"I thought you said this wasn't a movie."

"It isn't a good movie. Roger and Ebert do not give it two thumbs up. They're using another finger entirely."

Richie punched Head Eddie in the face, but instead of feeling teeth and lips he felt the wall behind him. Richie would never hurt Eddie, but this wasn't Eddie, and this wasn't a movie. This was his head, and sometimes Richie needed a good knock upside the head.

"Richie."

He turned around to see Eddie standing behind him in the open doorway.

"I know what this looks like," said Richie, smiling his best interview smile. "But the wall started it."

* * *

Richie sat on the edge of his desk, and Eddie stood in front of him, wrapping his knuckles in gauze. Eddie's soft hands were careful, holding Richie's wrist as he wound the bandage. Richie's pulse under his fingers.

"I saw you die," said Richie.

Eddie didn't have to ask what he was talking about, even though this was something they had never talked about. Maybe because of it. Richie couldn't talk about it, because he _was_ always performing, and there was nothing funny about _this_.

"I know it's not real." Richie laughed, but it was more out of habit than anything else. "But what about me is?"

Eddie held Richie's wrist, his pulse, his heartbeat in his hands, and said, "Everything I love."

Richie didn't have anything to say to that.

Neither did the Eddie in his head.


End file.
